Ascension Sunday
June 1, 2025
“I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the
saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember
you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so
that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the
hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious
inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his
power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
God put this power to work in Christ when
he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly
places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every
name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he
has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for
the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”
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Jesus’
friends and family and followers had him back among them for forty days after
the resurrection. His appearances seem
to have been sporadic and unexpected; they didn’t always recognize him right
away and he showed up without warning inside locked rooms and so forth. It’s not unreasonable to think that being
killed and restored to life is going to make you different in a lot of
ways. Besides, even before the
resurrection, he had both worked miracles and acted in ways that they only came
to understand later. But forty days – a
little over a month – is enough time to begin getting used to a “new
normal”. The important thing was that
they had him back.
Then
he left. Luke describes it as a joyful
moment.
“Then he led them out as far as Bethany,
and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he
withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to
Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing
God.” [Luke 24:50-53]
My question is why that would have been such a happy
thing. Yes, when anyone goes to heaven
and is given a place in God’s presence, that is the absolute best thing that
can happen for them. There’s great
comfort in knowing that. But isn’t there
always still a lingering sense of missing them?
When
Paul (or someone writing under his name) composed the letter to the Ephesians,
he wrote as someone slightly younger than the first disciples. Paul was someone who had not known Jesus in
his time walking the earth, but who met Jesus as already raised to the highest
honor and glory and blessedness of a world greater than this one. Paul encountered Jesus in a vision of glory
so intense that it knocked him to the ground and blinded him. That gave him a perspective different from
Peter or John or any of the rest.
When
he wrote to the church in Ephesus, he wrote with the conviction that Jesus had
not simply been returned to life on earth but returned to life that encompasses
both earth and heaven. He is not absent
and his being raised to heaven doesn’t make him unknowable or distant.
Precisely
because he has gone beyond our current, limited part of reality Jesus is able
to reach out to all people in a broader and fuller way than if he were with us
on our level of existence alone. You and
I can only do one thing at a time. We
can only take in what is around us here and now. We also, I would point out, need one-on-one
time truly to get to know somebody. That
means Jesus, too.
Jesus,
however, having been raised to a kind of existence I’ll call “heaven”, is in a
position where earthly considerations don’t get in the way and he can be with everybody
all at once in just the way that they need.
Time and place are real, and we live within them, but when it comes to
Jesus, time and eternity intersect and the usual rules that constrain us don’t
apply to him.
God
the Father has placed the Son
“far above all rule and authority and
power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but
also in the age to come. And he has put
all things under his feet” [Ephesians 1:21-22]
“All things” like the limitations we know by virtue of
being tied to time and place that now he is free of. He can at the same time be consoling someone
who has lost a child and sharing the joy of parents who are welcoming a
newborn. Jesus can be guiding the hand
of an artist in one place and restraining the temper of somebody else a
continent away at the same time.
And when we, as
individuals, sort of find ourselves in different places at the same time, with
conflicting thoughts or mixed emotions, he can hear and respond to them in ways
that sets nothing of the complexities aside.
We do find ourselves sorry for ourselves but happy for someone else. We do find ourselves disappointed but
understanding how somebody has let us down.
We do get angry with someone and still love them. We do disagree with others but still wish
them well. We do live in these strange
gray areas where we need someone with us to guide us through the confusion.
Jesus, who sees all
things from the viewpoint of both heaven and earth, gets that. Again, he gets that better than we do. When there are gray areas in our lives, he
sees through the fog. He can guide us
best and offer what is best for us. He
knows exactly how much we need to be pitied and how much we need to be
confronted. He knows, as we do not know,
what is really important and what just seems that way, what is real and what is
imaginary, what is worldly and what is eternal.
He brings all of that
together. The prayer that opens the
letter to the Ephesians asks that God
“give you a spirit of wisdom and
revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart
enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what
are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the
working of his great power.” [Ephesians 1:17-19]
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